The Wolf is Waiting for You
by loulou365
Summary: A merciless young kunoichi is finally captured by Konoha, but the mystery behind her story soon entangles Shikamaru and Ino. Betrayal, deception and blood force the two loyal ninja to question what they have fought to protect their whole lives and takes them down a dangerous path from which they can not return.
1. Chapter 1

She used an earth jutsu to moisten the ground and watched as her opponent slid helplessly into the mud. As she released her signs the ground returned quickly to its normal firm state and the large man was trapped. Then the girl moved fast and suddenly she had hurdled herself up to kneel on the man's shoulders, her knife tight against his throat. The man's eyes widened.

"Shouldn't we stop her Shika?" Ino whispered in my ear. I shook my head.

Although the young woman was their target the aggressively large man that was now her victim had attacked first. I hadn't learned much from this girl's file so I used this opportunity to attempt to find her weakness. Unfortunately this was the only option.

I watched closely. A small knife held tightly in her right hand. The man struggle like some kind of small game stuck in a trap, knowing its fate. She pressed the blade lightly against his neck. One swift motion, left to right, with an upward flick. She was clinical and precise. The man slumped forward, half encapsulated in earth, and the girl used his motion to gracefully summersault off his shoulders into a standing position.

'There!' I though, as I saw her shoulders relax and her hand slide under her top to grope at her side coming away with blood on it. She had concealed it so well in battle, but the man had managed to knick her. Now was the time to make a move.

I didn't conjure a plan of action quickly enough. I saw her head turn hastily in our direction and her body stood to attention again, an action similar to that of the deer in the forest back home. She must have an acute sensitivity to chakra because Ino and I had ours under complete control to remain hidden. I felt Ino's hand shove our shoulders apart. The girl had throne five kunai in our direction.

This one was going to be very troublesome.

"South bound." Ino yelled wasting no time, leaping from the branches and running after our target.

I quickly followed, shaking my head in frustration as I formed signs for my shadow jutsu. I had them reach out in her direction but she was too quick. Despite her injuries she was out running both of us and evading my shadows attempts to capture her.

"I've lost a visual" Ino yelled back to me as she slowed down.

"Follow the blood." I said sprinting past her with my head down looking for the small flecks of red.

I forced my jutsu to go farther grabbing blindly at her. She dodged each attempt at capture, but I knew she was getting weaker. I saw the droplets of blood come more frequently. She must be irritating the wound with all this silly running.

"Damn it" I growled as I came to a stop. The path of blood diverged in three directions.

'That sly fox.' I thought to myself, but then I heard it, the faintest splashing of water in the direction of one of her paths.

I began to run again slowing to a halt as she came into view. She thought she had gotten away. She was using chakra to walk across the water towards a small waterfall. She was weak though and her chakra was fading as she stumbled and slipped, each foot suspending on the surface less and less often. She clumsily disappeared behind the falls as Ino stopped behind me.

We looked into each others eyes with a mutual understanding then we both made our way silently towards the fall, Ino trailing me closely. We skidded silently across the water to its edge. I sent my shadows in before me and I could feel them finally grab at her, she was motionless.

We slipped under the falls and into the small cave that lay behind it. Our target lay half in the water and half out collapsed on the edge of the rocks. The water around her was slowly becoming cloudy with red.

I used my shadows to lift the woman from the water and set her down on a flat rock. Then nodded for Ino to attend to her. My shadows held the girl tight in case she wasn't ready to give up the fight.

"She's out." Ino said absentmindedly as she moved glowing blue hands over the woman's wounds.

I let the shadow jutsu fall, only after I saw Ino's hands move from the girls injury to her forehead. She was locking her mind with a special jutsu she had created so the trip back to Konoha would be uneventful.

* * *

" Shikamaru she's awake." Ino said as she walked into my office. " Do you want to be there for the interrogation?"

"Anything to get away from this troublesome paperwork." I said standing and smiling at the blonde.

We walked down three flights from my office in the strategic wing of the building to the lower level interrogation and holding wing. It was dark and poorly lit on this floor with heavy locked doors in each labyrinth like hall. Ino pulled a door open to a small room with a one-way glass mirror against one wall that looked into a brightly lit room on the opposing side.

I stepped in to see the fiery young woman on the other side of the glass standing in front of a table with a chair on each side. I made my way to the glass watching as a man stepped into the room. He sat down slowly at the table with a folder in his hand. I vaguely recognized him as one of the interrogators under Ino's advisory. The girl stood staring down at him.

"She's refusing to deflate the room." Ino said staring at the girl clinically "It's a sophisticated way of creating an imbalance in power. I'm definitely going to have fun with this girl." Ino said, mostly to herself. A smirk crossed her full lips as she stared through the glass.

I watched as Ino's eyes flicked from the girls unmoving expression down to her hands that where tucked behind her back. Ino was trying to read her. I could see her drawing conclusions about the way the girl stared down at the interrogator and the way she stood with both feet planted firmly next to one another in perfect symmetry. Ino was good at reading people, even without her mind jutsus. But instead of watching the prisoner I surveyed Ino's expressions as she became more and more puzzled staring at this girl.

"Would you like to sit down?"

I turned back to watch the proceedings as the man spoke softly to the girl. She made no response, just continued to stare down at him silently, unflinching.

The door in the observation room clicked open and Tsunade walked in.

"What is Tazlo doing in there with her?"

"Oh." Ino said tearing her eyes away from the glass "I wanted to observe her first before I went in. She seems very deeply engrained in this domineering persona and I think we need to wear her down before I go in to speak to her." Ino said as she turned from Tsunade back to the glass. "I'm going to go ahead and guess she won't give us anything either way so I'll have to use my jutsu eventually."

"Good. I need a full report on what you find. She's been a big threat to Konoha. We need to find out whom she's working for and for what reason. We need to know who was next on her hit list so we can protect them." Tsunade said turning and leaving the room as quick as she came.

"She's unresponsive to Tazlo." Ino was speaking to herself again, she seldom had any thoughts that she internalized. I had a love hate relationship with this aspect of her personality. It was helpful in situations like this where both of us needed to gather intel and she had observational skills that I didn't, but when every little thought she had would poor out of her it became very troublesome.

Ino began to continue on with her analysis when she suddenly stopped. She had seen something before I did; a twitch in the girl's stance or a flicker behind her eyes.

She had launched herself across the table at Tazlo, her hands throttling his neck.

I was closest to the door so I quickly swung it open making signs with my hands as I moved out into the hallway. Ino followed me and grabbed the handle to the interrogation room, it flew open. I saw the girl running for an escape as my shadows filled the small chamber. They grabbed at her restraining her every inch. She screamed in frustration and for the first time I saw her piercing blue eyes. They were the lightest misty white blue and they darkened as she screamed at me looking me directly in the eyes. It sent a chill down my spine as I could feel the storm that raged within her.

I snapped from the moment and manipulated my shadows to pinch the pressure point residing at the tender spot between her neck and shoulder. She unwillingly relaxed from her terrifying scream into unconsciousness.

"Tazlo are you okay?" Ino said, coming to the man's side.

"Yeah I'm fine." He replied rubbing at his neck, which was already turning a light purple.

Three guards came in behind me, probably having heard the commotion. I lowered the girl to the ground and Ino instructed them to take her back to her cell. Saying something about how the girl really didn't intend to hurt Tazlo , she only wished to escape.

I watched as they lifted her from the ground her soft features looked completely relaxed. It was so dramatically different from the furious face I had just witnessed. How could such peace and unrest exist in one person, I wondered.

* * *

"What the hell was that Ino?!" I asked when we got into her office.

"It was the pictures." Ino said throwing the girls file down on her desk as she began to pace behind it. "When Tazlo started putting down the pictures of her targets something snapped. She kills like a mercenary but I have a feeling these hits are more personal. She's trying to be enigmatic, she isn't telling us anything and she's staying closed, but her aggression is getting the best of her. She's probably not used to being trapped like this. It's like caging a wild animal; eventually she'll do or say something that gives her away. We need to wear away at her more and she'll snap again."

"I don't think another snap is what we want Ino." I said remembering the girls penetrating stare.

"No not like that. It's like breaking a wild mustang with girls like this. She's too proud to admit defeat until she's finally broken. She's been refusing food, she's refusing to sleep in her cell, and she refused to sit down in the interrogation. When she was addressed with the pictures of her victims she could not refuse what she had done, and who they were. We were forcing her to give into something."

"What?"

"Her rage. She has a fire that even she can't contain and it's going to burn her up. Then it will be easy to enter her mind." Ino said with something I could only place as delight.

If there was one thing Ino liked more than talking it was defeating her opponents, in particular female opponents.

"I think she needs a couple days to let this sit. She's starving herself and loosing sleep it's only degrading her physical and mental state." Ino said beginning her pacing again "Then I'll interrogate her personally. If I get nothing than I'll be forced to extract it from her."

* * *

Three days passed and this girl wasn't giving in. The guards said she did nothing but sit on the floor of her cell staring through the bars. I saw no other way to get information from her; therefor Ino would have to work her magic.

I made sure to be there during the interrogation, but Ino refused to let me in the room for protection. She said it wasn't part of her strategy. I wondered what exactly she was planning because I had a nagging feeling it would not go well.

I watched through the glass as three guards escorted the girl into the room. She had tight cuffs on each hand; one of the guards attached the chain that connected the two cuffs to a chain that was attached to the middle of the table. They were being more precautious this time. Good.

Ino entered. She stood across from the girl with her back to the glass. I watched as the girl surveyed Ino, sizing her up.

"We need a name for our files." Ino finally said as she slowly sat down in front of the girl.

I stared in astonishment as the girl used her feet to pull back her own chair and sat down.

"Mist." She said simply, her voice was smooth and soft and came out like a whisper.

I couldn't quite pin this interaction into a category. It was an outlier to all that I had come to know of this girl. She was proud, stubborn, and full of wrath, she was precise, clinical, and swift, she has an earth affinity and a powerful left pop. She did not speak or sit; she did not surrender or yield. This was a tactic, this girl was intelligent and manipulative and this was some kind of ploy.

I watched the girl closely. Her face was controlled as she concentrated on Ino. She sat with her hands in small loose fists on the table. She was showing the mildest symbols of submission. I kept my eyes fixed on her. Something was off.

"Mist." Ino said as she scrawled it at the top of the manila folder "We've been calling you Rogue X all week. Its nice to have a name to put to all these horrible murders."

"Murders…huh." A sinister smile crossed Mist's face. "That's what your nation is calling them?"

Then it happened quicker than either Ino or I could react. Mist's eyes flashed to the mirror. I could feel her look right at me through the glass as if to taunt me and then she slammed her fists hard on the table. Her chair flew back against the wall and she used the wave of energy from her strike to boost herself into an acrobatic flip. She landed behind Ino and yanked hard at the chain that attached her to the table, breaking it. She pulled the chain between her cuffs back and against Ino's neck.

When I entered the room I moved with blind fury. I stormed towards the two girls struggling on the ground and grabbed at the chain around Ino's delicate neck, breaking it. She was then able to swing her arms back, pushing Mist away from her.

I charged at the girl quickly before she recovered and made three swift moves; a hit to her wrist, a hit to her inner elbow, and one hard hit to the soft flesh behind her ear. The increasing pain of each blow shocked her nervous system and she blacked out falling with a thud onto the cement floor from which she had just risen.

I turned back to Ino who had pushed herself half way up the wall. She was moving her hand, blue with chakra, over her throat. I relaxed to see that she was okay.

"Take her to my room." She croaked out in anger.

I looked from Ino to the girl and back again.

"Are you sure?"

Ino was in no state to start playing mind games. He jutsus required concentration and meticulousness. She was to wound-up to probe through someone's mind with precision.

"Do it Shikamaru!" she urged me with anger.

I picked the girl up from the floor and headed out into the halls.

Mist, it may have been the wrong time to think it, but the name fit her. She was like the mist. Not only did her eyes distinctly remind me of a misty blue ocean, but she had also been nothing but mysterious and full of danger since they had brought her back. I hoped we would uncover all of her secrets soon because her threat only increased with time. I was starting to think we knew less about her than we did at the beginning of this mission.

I was pulled from my thoughts when I came to the door of Ino's personal interrogation room.

I had watched a few of Ino's interrogations and none of them did I ever want to be a part of. Memory extraction seemed, to me, like a very painful process and the more her victims would struggle for control the more pain they would feel.

I entered the high ceilinged room, lit only by a small light that came down in the middle over a reclined chair with menacing straps on it. I laid Mist down on the chair and strapped her wrists and ankles in then moved to do the full body straps when I saw her staring down at me. Her eyes burrowed into me and I felt an involuntary chill go down my spin.

She didn't speak or struggle. Her face was controlled and I had no inclination as to what she was thinking. At that moment I didn't quite know what I was thinking either. Her gaze was paralyzed.

"Shika. Get away from her." Ino marched into the room, brushing me aside as she grabbed at the last of the straps and tightened them over the girl with tremendous force.

"We are going to have a little lesson in obedience." Ino said staring down at Mist with a look that made most flinch, but she was not fazed. She returned with a challenging look.

Ino formed delicate signs with her hand and went to place them on either side of the girls face but the minute their skin connected Ino screamed in animalistic pain. Her hand still remained on the sides of Mist's face. I watched Mist staring at Ino as her eyes darkened to a stormy blue. For a moment I didn't know what to do.

Then I rushed to pull Ino away but Mist seemed to let go of her before I did. Ino fell to her knees panting.

"Wh….what was that." Ino said staring down at her hands. I knelt down by her side trying to look her in the eyes but she kept looking at her hands.

My head flew up as I heard an eerie chuckle echo against the cement walls. Mist was staring down at Ino with menace in her smile.

"You didn't think you were the only pretty blonde with minds tricks did you?"


	2. Chapter 2

"Ino what did you see." Tsunade sat behind her desk staring at Ino intently. I could see the concern in her face.

If the interrogation would have went as planned we'd both be writing up paperwork and arranging for new missions by now, but it had not gone at all as planned so I brought a shaken up Ino to the only person I thought could get something out of her at this point.

"Ino you don't have to tell me, you could use your jutsu and show me."

I watched as Ino's hands unintentionally recoiled at the notion of using her jutsu again.

"I didn't really see anything. It was mostly darkness but I felt…" she trailed off and I could see her eyes glaze. She was reliving the moment. It must have been something powerful.

"I could feel tremendous pain and suffering and torment. I saw flashes of a village and fire. It wasn't like most interrogations. I wasn't taking her memories she was… she was giving them to me. I feel like she was forcing me to relive these awful moments that she had, but she was blocking my vision somehow. She didn't want me to see something. She just wanted me to feel…everything."

Even now Ino was trying to analyze the girl. As she recovered from her state of shock she looked up to Tsunade hoping for some kind of interpretation, but it was I that spoke first.

"She must have some kind of mind control jutsu and she's obviously hiding something from us. We need to get to the bottom of it. If Ino's up for it I propose a second interrogation preformed under sedation." I said straightening up. I wanted to protected Ino, but I knew she was strong enough, if not stubborn enough, to continue with our mission.

"Shikamaru, we have some of our best people working on this with you. It wasn't much to go on, actually it was pretty much nothing to go on, but the name helped. We can now connect Rogue X to 3 other assassinations." I felt the tension in my shoulders increase. This was a step forward but it just thickened the plot, very troublesome.

Tsunade pulled a folder from a stack on her desk and tossed it to me. I shuffled through it and listened as Tsunade began to speak again

"We don't have her actual name or any connections to a village, but we know that she's been active in both Earth country and western Fire country. She's been known as The Mist or The Grey Wolf and has only been referred to as a merciless undetectable assassin. Each of her three recorded kills were very similar to the two that brought us to this mission. I'm not sure why we hadn't connected them sooner."

Tsunade looked wary as she rubbed at her temples.

"I'm having two ANBU take over this case. If you or Ino remember anything of relevance pertaining to it please come to me but you have been dismissed from this mission."

"You're putting ANBU on this case?" I said a little confused. I could solve this, I was the head of Strategies in Konoha and Ino was rising in the ranks of the Interrogation Unit. We were probably the best people for this case.

"She's dangerous Shikamaru. Have you not witnessed it? She's a danger to you and Ino and me and this village. I won't be argued with. You can submit your reports tomorrow so they can be turned over to the ANBU. You are both dismissed." She said with finality.

I could feel a hint of anger well up in me but I didn't let it show. I waited for Ino to stand and then let her follow me closely out of the room.

"I feel like she's not telling us something. She said she has other people on this case that we had no idea about and then she takes the case and hands it over to the ANBU. She must have more than that useless file she just showed me. Half of the intel is redacted "

"Shika she obviously thinks this case is better suited for the ANBU. I mean at least you don't have to deal with it now. Too troublesome" She said in a mocking tone, which told me she had recovered from the whole ordeal. But still, there was something in the way that she didn't want to fight for this case that told me the incident with Mist had affected her.

I shoved my hands in my pockets. This was an unintended sign to Ino that I hadn't given up I just didn't want to argue. She gave me a defying look and I smiled back at her scratching my head.

* * *

I left for home early, which didn't happen very often, but I had been bothered by Mist's case all day. Something felt off about it.

I didn't know the ANBU's methods when it came to things like this but I could only assume it involved torture or possibly a quiet, unpublicized assassination; either way it involved her disappearing even from the ninja's records.

I headed to the only place I knew I could be alone to think.

When my head finally collapsed back into the soft grass I felt a familiarity that I hadn't in a long time. I rarely got the time to do this anymore and it was a real shame because I was completely at easy now.

I needed the world to slow down for a bit so I could clear my thoughts and this was the only place I could do it. I felt a gentle breeze ruffle my hair and my body relaxed as I closed my eyes.

* * *

"Our scoots say she's been moving sporadically through fire country but she is currently stationary on the western boarder. It's the perfect time to move in for an extraction."

Tsunade clasped her hands in front of her with the usual smirk on her face.

I went home that night with the small file for the mission and laid its content out on the floor. I had a photographic memory so it was easier to create a schema that way.

Rogue X

Age: Unkown (assumed to be 18-22)

Gender: Female

Height: Unknown (assumed to be 1.6-1.67 m)

Weight: Unknown (assumed to be 50-60 kg)

Rank: Unknown

Jutsus: Unknown

Affinity: Earth & Water, possible unknowns

Hand-to-hand Combat: Advanced

Mission: S-Rank

Ninja(s): Shikamaru N., Ino Y.

Estimated Length: 4 days

Location: Kinoko, Western Fire Country

Description: Extraction of Rogue X. Use of force is permitted. Suggested form of attack: long range.

Report back to: Interrogation and Holding, Hokage's Office

The two victims were both high-ranking officials in their villages, but other than that I had no idea who they were because much of their files were redacted. Thick black lines covered a majority of the text on the page. This wasn'tcompletly out of the ordinary. Most of the missions I was sent on had some kind of classified information on them.

The ANBU were the only ones that had the privilege of seeing certain information, for the safety of the village I had always been told. It was my job to follow orders and I had always been okay with this because I never thought the information being with held had any pertinence to what I did which was protect the village. The rest I believed was all politics and formalities that the Hokage and the ANBU dealt with.

Sometime before I had been inducted into the Strategies Unit of Konoha I had been offered a position in the ANBU, but had turned it down. They live much too troublesome lives. I mean without all that blacked out information I'd be reading cases all night. But now I was curious what exactly lies beneath those black bars.

I do remember another distinct observation about the victims; each kill was clean. They where bloody but they were precise. That's why I had assumed they were assassinations at first. Each victim was killed in almost the same manor, which was very common when it came to mercenaries.

Their files both came with coroner's reports. I remember the two identical rudimentary diagrams of the human body with a long straight dash drawn in red pen across the throat. There were pictures that accompanied one of the victim's files paper clipped to the top of their manila folder.

I recalled the eyes of the victim. There was the empty look that I had seen so many times before, but then I wondered if I could also see their last thought; fear.

Now the pain that had been welling up in my temples and behind my eyes came to a climax as I tried to weave in the new files I had just seen briefly in Tsunade's office; a mid-ranking official of some small distant village, a simple villager transporting fruit along fire country boarders, and a hermit living in earth country's woods.

Each one came with a similar coroner's report except the hermit who had none. He was found to deep in the wilderness for any coroner to wander, and he had seemed to have no one to be returned home to.

Ino had said that these could be more than assassinations that they were more personal. Mist could be killing for revenge, but then again she was so clinical and that was not a trait of someone killing for revenge

How were any of these people connected except by one swift slice at the hands of a lethal woman?

Then something clicked and all these images flashed behind my eyelids all at once I grabbed at my throat in a reflex.


	3. Chapter 3

Choking, hanging, throat slitting. There is something so definitive about death by any of these manners.

Mist's kills, her attacks, even her schemes and plots were fixated on the throat. It was OCD, it seemed it was an insatiable desire. It had to have been born from something traumatic. I remember Ino mentioning something about OCDs coming from traumatic experiences. They were manifested in an attempt to feel in control.

There was something that lingered in Mists past that made her cling to this idea of control. Weather she was an assassin or a vigilante or some kind of serial killer. I needed to find out more of her origins and I had to start somewhere.

* * *

The restaurant was crowded, just like we liked it. With all the clanking of dishes, shuffling of feet and buzz of conversation Ino and I could have a semi private conversations without worrying about being over heard.

We had sat like this many times over the past years. We'd have dinner before one of us was going on a long mission or coming back or if we had a long day, which was becoming a more frequent occurrence. We would sit on opposite sides of the booth sometimes without enough time to say all we needed and sometimes with too much time but they were always good meetings. They had a poignant nostalgia about them that I couldn't pin down.

Today was different though the noise of the café didn't seem to be as loud and I turned to see if anyone was looking at us. Then I turned back to Ino.

"Ino, I need you to do something for me."

"Haven't I done enough for you Shika?" Ino replied with a cheeky grin on her face.

"I need you to remember what you saw in Mist's mind."

Her grin slowly slide down into an obvious frown.

"I told you in Tsunade's office. All I saw was darkness with flashing images."

"I know but you said you saw a village." I watched her roll her eyes and I reached my hands across the table to rest on her forearm in a nonverbal plea. "Just close your eyes and tell me what you saw; the shape of the houses the color of the sky, anything would help."

"Okay" she said sighing and reluctantly closing her eyes.

She had a knack for recalling memories easily. It had to have something to do with her mind jutsu.

"Red clay. The ground is mostly red clay with small patches of grass. Small houses made of wood." Her eyelids twitched and her face tightened. She must be recalling some of the emotions Mist had forced on her. "The houses are on fire. I see people running around. None of them have headbands but most of them are wearing browns or greens. Its night time and there's fog everywhere and then there was smoke, everywhere, and the smell of fire."

Ino's body shook a little and I reached out, my fingers brushing her arms. She opened her eyes quickly; they were glossy with the beginning of tears.

"Its just full of pain Shikamaru. That's all I could see in this girl. I know she must have used it as a defense mechanism to keep me out, but it was all I could feel. She's so angry and full of…"

"Revenge." I said and Ino looked up at me. "I think she's hunting these people down. I think they're all connected somehow I just don't have enough information. We need to look at records. We need to find out where this all started."

"Shikamaru we're not on the case anymore." Ino's face looked sternly at me. She didn't know me as someone that went out of my way or went beyond my duties, but she knew me as someone who couldn't leave a problem unsolved.

She lowered her voice and set me with a stern look "Shika this is in the ANBU's hands, we can't do anything. Let it go."

"Okay, okay." I said after a long deadly glare from her. "Lets just eat."

We picked up our chopsticks and began eating the food that had been brought to us but I wasn't compiling with Ino's wishes. I went over what she said in my head. I wasn't going to give this up.

* * *

I spread a map out on my desk. I marked small red dots on the places where all six victims had been killed. I marked down in black where we had captured Mist. Then I circled a large area on the southeastern boarder of Fire Country. It was the only area I knew there to be red clay along with an abundance of trees. The houses were made of wood and in the case of any village, their buildings are made of what they have a lot of, so I assumed the village Ino saw was in a heavily wooded area.

The fog was a more broad description it could have been caused by a rainy season ,but I was inclined to think that it was indicative of the presence of a lake or river near the village. My eyes were searching the map for signs of blue when I heard a knock on my door.

I quickly rolled the map up and shoved it in a drawer before inviting whomever it was in.

"Ino. What did you need?" She closed the door silently behind her and stepped closer to my desk.

"I think they're terminating Mist."

I didn't let it show but I was slightly surprised by this quick verdict.

"I obviously wasn't told but I've been hearing rumors from the guards that they'll be moving her and I can only assume that it's the ANBU's best way to cover up an assassination."

"When?" I asked.

"Sometime this week I assume. I saw them bring her into one of their interrogation rooms this morning so either they got something from her or they didn't get enough from her."

"What do you want to do Shika?" She asked.

"I thought we weren't doing anything about this Ino." I said cocking one eyebrow at her.

"I don't know. I just feel like there's more to this. I was thinking about it last night and I couldn't sleep." Ino shook her head. I could tell she was conflicted about this. Her body language was uneasy and she kept glancing from the door to the window, like she was being watched or was preparing for an escape.

I pulled out the map from my drawer and laid it out in front of Ino, showing her what I had found.

"What you saw was obviously a fire, which should be somewhere in the Konoha records as long as it was somewhere in Fire Country. I've narrowed it down to somewhere in this area." I pointed to the circle. "It may have been in one of the villages that Konoha protects, seeing as no one in your vision had village headbands. We just need a way into the Records House."

"One of us needs to be assigned to another mission." Ino said hastily. "It's the only way it won't look suspicious if we check into the Records House."

I looked up at her and smirked. She was more brilliant than anyone gave her credit for.

"I can do it. Tsunade knows I like getting away, but she never gives me anything longer than a week." Ino spoke quickly again. "I'll go now."

"Okay, keep me updated." I said.

Ino left quickly.

I hoped this mystery would be solved. I hoped I was doing the right thing. I hoped this wouldn't be anymore troublesome than it already was.


	4. Chapter 4

Ino had told me to meet her in her office at noon the next day. She said she was going down to the House of Records that morning and would inform me of her findings. So I was ascending the stairs to the Interrogation and Holding level when alarms began going off. This either meant that someone was trying to get into the building or out of the building that wasn't supposed.

I had a feeling it was the latter.

I quicken my pace downward and got to the foot of the stairs looking down the hallway. Red lights on the walls were flashing and the noise of the alarm echoed everywhere. I stepped into the hallway as the heavy emergency door started closing behind me.

Then I saw quick motion at the end of the hallway, I saw a running figure. It was her. That sly little fox. It was Mist. As soon as she saw me she stopped and looked from me to the slowly closing heavy door behind me and I knew what was going to happen next. I was simply an obstacle on her way to freedom.

She ran straight at me and my hands moved rapidly to form signs. My shadows quickly moved across the floor towards Mist, but the second before they reached her she pushed off the ground jumping back and forth between the small hallway walls three times. I knew she couldn't keep her self off the floor for very long and when she came down my shadows recoiled on her like a spring trap.

Before I could even sense victory I felt my world go very dark, as if I was engulfed in my own shadows. Then there was searing pain in my head. I heard screaming and felt my whole body become hot. Out of the darkness I saw a quick glimpse of a village symbol. It was like a neon sign that flickered on but quickly died before I could get a truly good look. Next my mind was overloaded as I experienced an overwhelming amount of negative emotions; hate, rage, anguish, suffering. I began to feel something physical again as my shadows retreated and my sanity returned. I could feel my hands pressing tight on my temples and opened my eyes to find that Mist had reached me. I swung out an arm to stop her, which was a feeble attempt and a bad idea considering the state I was in. She grabbed it easily and swung it quickly behind my back, bringing me to my knees, then she pushed hard between my shoulder blades and I felt my joints dislocate.

There was nothing I could really do after that. She swiftly slipped through the closing steel door. I saw the flash of a smile and then she was gone.

"Fuck" I breathed out heavily in frustration and pain as I raised myself off of the ground.

I heard heavy footsteps coming my way and turned to find three guards coming my way. They stopped in front of me.

"She made it out. I couldn't stop her." I said simply, not thinking it necessary to explain my quick defeat.

"Rogue X has escaped level 3. Inform the ANBU and can you get Ino to the western stairs." One of them spoke into a headset.

The alarm had stopped but there was a ringing in my head like I had taken a hard blow to it. The red flashing lights on the walls did not stop so I closed my eyes and leaned against the steel door that remained closed, using my good shoulder to prop myself up as I let the past 5 minutes chaos fester in my mind. I tried to piece information together, but it seemed that the mess Mist had made in my head had aftereffects. I opened my eyes and stared down the hallway until I saw Ino and another guard come running our way.

"What happened? Are you okay?" Ino said breathily, coming close to me until I was staring down at her a silly grin on my lips.

"Yeah I'm fine but, could you do me a huge favor and put your medical nin skills to work. Mist may have dislocated my shoulder."

"Shika." Ino said in an unnecessary scolding tone.

She furrowed her brow at me and shifted her gaze from my eyes to my shoulder. Her hands glowed blue with chakra and I closed my eyes as my shoulder went numb. I felt her put one hand around my wrist and the other at my elbow. In two quick motions I heard my shoulder pop back into place and then felt Ino's cool chakra slowly repairing my tissues.

"Thanks." I said smiling down at her.

"Come on, let's go to my office. They probably won't open the emergency doors for awhile."

On our way to the office we saw three men being carried away on stretchers. Mist must have done some real damage before she left.

When the door finally closed we both started to speak. Ino told me to go first.

"First of all, she can make a connection through chakra, she got to me through my shadows. Second Mist showed me a symbol or I saw a symbol of a village. I don't really know exactly what happened, but I saw something weather it was intended or unintended, weather it was fabricated or not, I saw something."

"Well, I found a village." Ino said pulling a folder from a locked drawer in her desk. She handed them to me. "It's a very vague report. It says it was a forest fire that killed 21 people on May 19th fifteen years ago."

I looked down at the date stamped on the front. I opened the folder and pulled out a single piece of parchment.

Disaster Report: Fire

Village: Hiboshi, Fire Country

Damage report: 75% of village burned down in a forest fire. Presumably started at 22:00, the blaze was not extinguished until 2:00. Resulted in 20 civilian deaths and 1 Konoha ninja death.

"This doesn't make sense. That isn't the village symbol I saw."

"Maybe this isn't the right report then… but it was the only one that occurred in the area you circled that's been reported in the past 20 years."

I slammed my fists hard on Ino's desk. She jumped a little and moved towards me, a concerned look on her face. This was so infuriating. We were starting to figure things out and now we were three steps back with even more to deal with.

"What do you want to do?"

"I don't know."

* * *

After the steel doors had finally opened I went to report to Tsunade about what had occurred. For some reason I withheld the information about the village.

Tsunade had told me what had happened leading up to my interaction with Mist.

Apparently she had used strips of her clothing to fake an attempted suicide hanging. When the guard came in she knocked him out cold and ran for it, only running into two other guards before she met me. She had managed to get to the ground floor before she ran into two ANBU, which she evaded and made her escape.

They didn't have any idea on her whereabouts now, but she had not been seen leaving Konoha's walls, so they assumed she hadn't yet left the village. The guards on the wall were being doubled and the ANBU were now scouring the village for her.

Everyone was able to leave after the building had been swept, and I made my way home with little on my mind but the thought of the horrible headache I was enduring.

My apartment complex was quiet and when I got to my door I couldn't wait to drop dead on my bed. But when I stepped inside and something didn't feel right, I flicked the lights on, nothing.

I grabbed a kunai from my pocket and moved down the hallway towards my bedroom. I could sense someone on the other side of the door. I tighten my grip on the kunai as I prepared myself to open the door.


End file.
